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In a review of the biography of Mrs Porter by Andrew Hosken, Nicholas Lezard in The Guardian described her as "...the most corrupt British political figure in living memory, with the possible exception of Robert Maxwell". [1] She retired to Israel in 1993.

"I saw food past its sell-by date on the fresh food counters... and it was regularly being sold.

"At Tesco, it was re-packaged and re-labelled with a new date and reduced in price, sometimes days after it should have been sold or removed from the shelves.

"A lot of the time, the counter staff treated the meat and fish we were selling with indifference and, worryingly, there were times at Tesco when they had no idea what the real sell-by date was as they had altered it so many times.

"Sometimes it was not until the food smelled bad that it was eventually thrown away."

In a programme for BBC1's Whistleblower, "counter staff at... Tesco falsify food temperature records and flout basic rules of food hygiene such as using different knives for fish, raw meat and cooked meat to prevent cross-contamination of bacteria.

"Undercover footage shows the factory floor of a major supplier of ready meals to Tesco cross-contaminated with urine and faecal matter from employees' boots, and a farm which supplies chickens to Sainsbury's where a bin of dead birds crawling with hundreds of maggots is alongside the area for live birds being reared for sale." - TV film claims Tesco and Sainsbury's stores flout hygiene rules ...

3. According to The Guardian, 31 May 2008:

The magazine Private Eye (May 2008) "identified what it said was a Tesco tax avoidance operation involving a complex web of offshore operations centred on the Swiss canton of Zug.

"Cheshunt is the name of the Hertfordshire town where Tesco has its headquarters.

"The Cheshunt Overseas accounts provide grounds for believing that the structure may so far have assisted the international retailer in sheltering more than £66m in profit from UK tax." (Tesco: new claims of tax avoidance)

In May 2007 it was revealed that Tesco had moved the head office of its online operations to the tax haven of Switzerland. In February 2008 a six month investigation by The Guardian revealed that Tesco has developed a complex taxation structure involving offshore bank accounts in the tax haven of theCayman Islands.[31]

Tesco is in the process of selling its UK stores, worth an estimated £6 billion, to Cayman Island based companies set up by Tesco. These companies then lease the stores back to Tesco. This arrangement enables Tesco to avoid an estimated £1 billion tax on profits from the property sales, and also to avoid paying any tax on continuing operation of the stores, as the rate of corporation tax in the Cayman Islands is zero. 5.In Thailand, Tesco has been criticised for aggressively pursuing critics of the company. Writer and former MP Jit Siratranont is facing up to two years in jail and a £16.4m libel damages claim for saying that Tesco was expanding aggressively at the expense of small local retailers. Tesco served him with writs for criminal defamation and civil libel.[90]

6. Criticism of Tesco includes allegations of stifling competition due to its undeveloped "land bank",[91]pugilistically aggressive new store development without real consideration of the wishes, needs and consequences to local communities,[92]using cheap and/or child labour,[93][94]opposition to its move into the convenience sector[95]and breaching planning laws.[96]

7.It's time to close down the big supermarkets because they do more harm than good.

Walmart and Tesco are examples of big supermarkets.

"Wal-Mart may drive prices down, but it drags the quality of life for millions of people down with it.

"With hundreds of employees dependent on public assistance to meet their basic needs, American taxpayers subsidize Wal-Mart's low prices at the rate of roughly $420,750 a year for every 200-employee store by paying for low-income services...

"Wal-Mart hurts U.S. communities by undercutting local merchants and increasing urban sprawl, and its suppliers have been cited for labor and human rights violations." - Responsible Shopper Profile: Wal-Mart:

8. "I've had a big notice in my shop window for a few weeks "the shop that Tesco cannot close" along with photos of the 50 empty shops in our town.

"The trouble with weeds is that left unchecked they become invasive and strangle everything else. Tesco has spread uncontrolled with frightening speed. In some parts of the country it has 45% of the grocery market...

"Tesco... subverts the democratic process as it forces through planning permissions against community wishes; it added 2m sq ft of sales space last year alone...

"It suffocates independent shops and markets; it uses its power to squeeze its suppliers...

"The supermarket sector, with its just-in-time ordering that requires casual labour to be turned on and off like a tap, and its new packhouse industries, has been one of the most prolific creators of demand for trafficked labour."

Hundreds of thousands of teenagers have such poor mastery of the three Rs they cannot scrape a grade C in the two subjects employers and parents regard as crucial.

They are finishing compulsory schooling without the literacy and numeracy skills they need to "participate in life, learning and work" despite a raft of multi-billion pound Labour initiatives...

And the inability of pupils to get good grades comes despite widespread suspicions that exams have been dumbed down in recent years...

Forty-two per cent of pupils finished 11 years of compulsory education without achieving at least a grade C in GCSE English which means they struggle to read and summarise information accurately or use basic grammar...

Forty-eight per cent - or 301,671 - failed to reach the same standard in GCSE maths meaning they are unable to calculate the area of a room.

A total of 54 per cent - nearly 350,000 - fail to achieve the expected level in both English and maths.

"Ofsted’s chief inspector, David Bell, referred in his latest report to a 'hard core of pupils with no social skills' whose language is 'offensive' and who have 'little or no understanding of how to behave sensibly'.

"They are, he said, 'unteachable'.

"If verbal and physical abuse is increasing and parental control is reducing, then the number of disillusioned teachers leaving the profession, now one in three, will also rise.

"One Leeds deputy head teacher with 30 years’ experience is in no doubt. 'Some of these children are coming through secondary school not properly house-trained,' he says. 'They cannot sit still and listen...

"Even children in nursery schools are now displaying high levels of unacceptable actions — ranging from offensive language to abusive and insulting comments and threats.

"The report criticised the lack of support from local education authorities and parents, with one in 12 teachers claiming to have been threatened by parents at least once a term."

In 1007, a pupil from a UK school took a knife on a school trip. A pupil was stabbed in the chest. The pupil, one of three who had carried knives on the trip, successfully appealed against exclusion and is back at school.

In 2007, at another UK school, governors overturned the decision of a headmaster who had expelled a pupil for setting up a website calling on classmates to kill a teacher.

In 2007, an 11-year-old pupil who repeatedly battered a fellow pupil on the head, punched a member of staff and smashed a door was allowed back to his school by the governing body.

A comment on the Sunday telegraph website reads:

I was once a teacher. - Thank God! no more! Thank You Thank you and thank you to the parents and governors who started a campaign against me and forced me out! I was accused of being too strict and unsympathetic! I refused to teach children who abused me verbally and it was bye bye not to them but me! I was never once offered any support by other teachers or the local authority. There is no hope now. None. If you are training to be a teacher leave now!Why aren't these violent youths and frequently thuggish youths and all and every one of them a bully jailed? This lip service to anti-bullying campaigns is pathetic -it's the bullies and their horrible parents who are protected. None of them deserve a second chance! That's the tosh that creates them in the first place and makes schools hell for all but the small groups of thugs and bullies of both sexes now I have to say.Posted by ep on December 2, 2007

5.So, how should schools be organised?

1.Give pupils a choice of schools.

This means there must be lots of small schools of different types.

All schools should be tiny. The big schools should be broken up.

Parents and children must have a wide choice of schools where possible. No secondary school needs to have more than 200 children.

2.Give headmasters and teachers the right to exclude pupils who are disruptive.

3.Set up special schools that give intensive care (very expensive) to the disruptive children.

4.Set up top quality schools that cater for the less academic kids.

There are parents and children who want such schools - so long as they are well run, and do not become dumping grounds for the disruptive children.

5.Lower the school leaving age and shorten the school day.

This will mean children will learn more. That is the paradox.

The school day should be about 3 hours.

The school leaving age should be around 12.

The 1819 Factory Act in the UK limited the working day for children in cotton mills.

What we need now is a Schools Act limiting the school day to three hours.

I would suggest that school hours could be 9 am to 12 noon.

Very few children can concentrate on school work for more than 3 hours per day.

When children are not at school they can enjoy being children.

Interests will vary:

A. Children can work at home or in libraries on interesting homework projects. It would help if every child was given a computer.

B. They can join clubs involved in everything from sport to music to carpentry to journalism ....

C. They can become apprentices in safe and interesting occupations.

D. They can explore their world.

Mothers of younger children will be able to spend more time with their offspring.

6. Mothers of young children should stay at home and not go out to work.

Studies show that of the average £5,160 spent on a child's education annually, £1,700 is swallowed up by local government.

According to Scotland on Sunday, 9 September 2007, (SNP school plan sparks class war)Glasgow and Edinburgh education chiefs say they cannot carry out an SNP pledge to cut the size of classes in the early years of primary school to 18 pupils because there is a lack of money and classrooms.

It is time to close down the "bloated" education authorities. Get rid of the government bureaucrats, both local and national. Sack the education chiefs. It is these folks who have helped to ruin British schools.

We could learn from the Netherlands, when it comes to the organisation of schools.

In the Netherlands 70% of children are educated in private schools at the taxpayers' expense.

In the Netherlands, state spending on education is lower per head than in Britain, and results are better. (Schools unchained)

Some of the alleged London bombers, including Tanweer, 'had been arrested in 2004 but freed in a bid to catch a wider network, former French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has claimed'.

"It seems that part of this team had been subject to partial arrest... in Spring 2004," Sarkozy told a news conference, reportedly quoting what British Home Secretary Charles Clarke had told an emergency meeting of EU justice and home affairs ministers.

It is possible that Tanweer was recruited by the security services after his arrest.

A noted terror expert told the BBC that Mohammed Siddique Khan, the alleged ringleader of the 7/7 London bombings, was working for British intelligence agency MI5 as an informant at the time of the attacks.

At his father’s home village in Pakistan, Mohammad Saleem, 'Tanweer's cousin', reportedly described how Tanweer, 22, hero-worshipped Osama bin Laden. (Report in The Times, July 22, 2005 - Cousin listened to boasts about suicide mission )

This is strange, considering that few Moslems believe in Osama bin Laden. In Pakistan's North-West Frontier province, support for Osama bin Laden was 4 % in January 2008. (What's really scary about terror statistics)

The Sunday Times, on 23 July 2006, had a story entitled: How they brainwashed my friend into being a bomber. Path to 7/7 suicide mission revealed.

The Sunday Times quotes a friend of Tanweer as saying:

“He [Tanweer] is not going to be remembered in a bad way by everybody. He was a good lad, nobody ever complained about him. Basically everybody thinks he was brainwashed.”

"He (Tanweer) was a patsy set-up in a collaborative effort engineered by a British-American and possibly Israeli intelligence elements with a shared interest in perpetuating murder and chaos and blaming it on a shadowy network of terrorists, thus portraying Islam as a renegade and recalcitrant religion, outside the pale of civilized nations and peoples."

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Do you believe in a society in which hugging people is considered to be healthy? Or a society where violence against the body is considered morally necessary for the salvation of the soul.

The USA and UK seem to prefer violence to love.The USA is one of the worst places in the industrialized world to be a child, according to a report from the United Nations.

"The United Kingdom and the United States find themselves in the bottom third of the rankings for five of the six dimensions reviewed," UNICEF said in a summary of the report. (PDF)JAMES W. PRESCOTT, Ph.D., in HUSTLER (Article: Child Abuse in America: Slaughter of the Innocents), October 1977, wrote: "I found that those cultures that gave a great deal of infant physical affection -that is, a lot of touching, holding and carrying - were rated very low in adult physical violence. "Conversely, the cultures that were rated low on adult physical affection of children were rated very high on adult physical violence. Thirty-six out of the 49 cultures examined fit this pattern...

"We found support for the basic relationship between approval of violence and rejection of physical pleasure. Individuals who agreed with violent statements also agreed with statements that rejected physical pleasure.

For instance, the majority of people who agreed with such statements as:

"Physical punishment and pain help build a strong moral character," "Capital punishment should be permitted by society," "Violence is necessary to really solve our problems" and "I can tolerate pain very well,"

also agreed with such statements as:

"Prostitution should be punished by society," "Responsible premarital sex is not agreeable to me," "Nudity within the family has a harmful influence upon children" and "Sexual pleasures help build a weak moral character."

We must reject the idea that pain and violence are both necessary and moral and that physical pleasure is immoral.Article: Child Abuse in America: Slaughter of the Innocents~~Jersey Police Deputy Chief Officer Lenny Harper "has had more than 140 poison-pen letters, threats to his home, his car burned and rumours spread about his private life.

"He said he has come under renewed attack over the past few days and has accused a 'handful' of journalists and politicians of attempting to undermine the investigation by circulating lies and vicious rumours.

"Detectives investigating allegations of abuse at a former Jersey children's home said new tests had proved 'beyond doubt' that the remains of more than one child had been found." - Jersey tests confirm remains find

"The Bush administration has never forgiven Turkey for ruining its attack plans for Iraq in the spring of 2003, when Turkey would not allow a U.S. armored division to invade from the northeast." - The black channel and the White House

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan has written a memoir called "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception." ( Iraq claims burst over White House trail)

According to McClellan:

1. Bush was not "open and forthright" on Iraq. He used propaganda to sell the war.

2. The Iraq war "was not necessary."

The Iraq war "was a serious strategic blunder."

3. Bush botched the Hurricane Katrina affair.

4. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was deft at deflecting blame.

5. Vice President Dick Cheney is "the magic man" who steers policy behind the scenes.

6. Former senior Bush advisor Karl Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, deceived McClellan on their role in the CIA leak scandal.

"I have particularly documented Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s infamous role in encouraging the military junta in its assassination attempt against President Makarios, which failed, and its coup against the Makarios government, which succeeded; and his support and encouragement of Turkey’s aggression against Cyprus..." - Britain & US Responsibility for Turkey’s Aggression in Cyprus

"Scottish local authorities would be tens of millions of pounds better off if the Scottish Government had control of North Sea oil revenue, it was claimed last night. The soaring cost of a barrel of Brent crude oil, which is now more than $130, has resulted in an extra £4billion being raised for HM Treasury since March, according to SNP MSP Nigel Don." - SNP demands fair share of oil cash

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Had Hilary Clinton "voted against the attack on Iraq, against the foul Kyl-Lieberman amendment (in retrospect, that was the vote that killed her chances), and against cluster bombs ( a big favorite amongst Jewish Billionaires for dropping on Muslim children), and campaigned as a No More Wars For The Jews Party member, she would have cleaned up on the nomination almost immediately, and people would be saying 'Obama who?' Her tragedy is that she didn't need the Jewish Billionaires..." - permanent link

"The UK Foreign Secretary, The Boy David Miliband the King in Waiting, said today, 'General Suleiman's election as President of Lebanon is an important step forward for Lebanon'... Of course this whipper snapper , Zionist US lap dog will support General Michel Sulieman for no better reason than that he is the glove puppet for the US..." - US finally install General Michel Sulieman as Lebanese President

The Simon Fraser University study points out that US government agencies have figures on terrorism which are wildly inaccurate.

A US government-funded database of terrorism is the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terror (MIPT).

The Simon Fraser study points out that US agencies count civilian casualties in Iraq as terrorism.

In the MIPT data, Iraq accounts for 80% of all deaths counted.

According to the Simon Fraser study director Professor Andrew Mack:

In the Congo in 1999, hundreds were killed by militia actions. The MIPT notes zero deaths that year from terrorism in the Congo. In other words, civilian casualties, in a war situation, do not seem to count as terrorism.

If you leave aside the Iraq war, terrorism has gone way down over the past five years.

The Simon Fraser study points to the "extraordinary drop in support for Islamist terror organizations in the Muslim world over the past five years."

An ABC/BBC poll in Afghanistan in 2007 showed support for militants in the country to be 1 % . In Pakistan's North-West Frontier province, support for Osama bin Laden was 4 % in January 2008.

The University of Maryland's Center for International Development and Conflict Management has documented a 54 % decline in the number of organizations using violence across the Middle East and North Africa between 1985 and 2004.

So, who might the security services recruit as a terrorist? A mentally backward guy? Someone in prison for drug offences?

23 humanitarian, peacekeeping and security organisations were linked to sexual abuse in the three countries.

"They especially ask us for girls of our age. Often it will be between eight and 10 men who will share two or three girls. When I suggest an older girl, they say that they want a young girl," a 14-year-old boy who works at a peacekeeping camp in Ivory Coast told the Save the Children research team.

"Many U.N. agencies and NGOs working here feel they cannot be touched by anyone," said an aid worker in Ivory Coast.

"TNI territorial commands are in the form of military deployment as a defense force. Therefore, if the function is scrapped, TNI will lose its strength.

"The presence of regional military commands is needed as long as they do not conduct government functions as they did in the past. When it's deemed necessary, the military can be deployed for humanitarian operations or to help regional governments."

"The greatest impediment to reform is that the TNI remains necessary to ensure Indonesia's territorial integrity.

"If the TNI gave up its territorial function the tendency for Indonesia to disintegrate would be considerable and the options for stopping it limited.

"So, the territorial function remains, yet that is in itself perhaps the greatest obstacle facing reform. There is one, increasingly thought about, view that suggests that real reform cannot exist in Indonesia for structural reasons, and that if there is real reform Indonesia would cease to exist." - Interview w/Dr. Damien Kingsbury on TNI, Mahfud, Gus Dur

4. Sjafrie Syamsuddin

Most of his career has been in Kopassus, including participating in the invasion of East Timor (Operasi Seroja) in 1976, the first of many tours there.

He has also had combat experience in Aceh. His specialisation was intelligence.

In 1985 he took the Infantry Officer's Advanced Course, in Fort Benning, USA.

In 1990 he commanded the Kopassus’ SGI (Intelligence Task Force) in East Timor, where he is reported to have been closely involved in directing the Santa Cruz massacre.

In 1993 he took a two-week training course at Special Air Service base, Swanbourne, Perth, Australia.

He led the presidential guard for Suharto in 1993-95. He gained experience in territorial commands, especially in Jakarta where he became military commander between 1997 and 1998.He was questioned over his role in the shooting of protesters in Jakarta in May 1998.

A British army medic has told how a 14-year-old Iraqi boy was bound and kicked before being left in stifling heat inside a Warrior armoured vehicle for more than an hour without water. The boy was kicked and punched each time he asked for water. The medic, from the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, was commended for his bravery after an operation in Iraq. - Army medic admits torturing Iraqi boy, 14

"It will be interesting to observe how many of those currently protesting against human rights abuse by the Peoples Republic of China in Tibet will direct their energies at protesting the abuse of human rights by the United Kingdom... I am sure Baha Mousa and his family would be grateful for any protest efforts, given that Mousa suffered and died at the hands of British army officers in 2004 and none of the officers have ever been brought to justice." - Gearing up to protest UK human rights abuses at the London 2012 Olympics: Baha Mousa RIP

Banks: "One of the biggest swindles in Canadian history, the elimination of statutory reserve requirements on Canadian banks, passed by essentially unnoticed in the early 90s... As soon as the reserve requirements were eliminated, the Canadian government was no longer able to access the statutory reserve requirement funds held in the Bank of Canada, and thus had to turn for borrowing to private banks. The Canadian banks then started making the annual billion dollar profits to which they have become accustomed...

"I'm not a fan of the American right-wing conspiracy theories that some secret cabal of (no doubt Jewish) financiers is stealing Americans blind due to their ownership of the Federal Reserve. This kind of nonsense simply obscures the real conspiracies whereby public wealth is turned over to private hands. The Canadian decision to eliminate the statutory reserves is an example of a real conspiracy..." - permanent link

"The man, who is black and in his twenties, returned on Friday night armed with two knives and tried entering the bar, where Knox was a regular drinker." Harry Potter actor stabbed to death in South London.

A United States Department of Justice report which surveyed homicide statistics between 1974 and 2004 stated that of the crimes surveyed, 52.1% of the offenders were Black, 45.9% were White, and 2% were Other Races. [6] 70% of prisoners in the United States are non-Whites.[7]Race and crime - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The oil economist Dr Mamdouh Salameh, who advises both the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation (Unido), told The Independent on Sunday that the price of oil would now be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of the record $135 a barrel reached last week, if it had not been for the Iraq war." - Oil: A global crisis

"It is the Scottish Question that may pose the biggest problem for Cameron... The Tories have led many English voters to believe they will answer the West Lothian Question by bringing in "English votes for English laws" and will axe the Barnett formula... Cutting Scottish public spending and excluding Scottish MPs from votes in the Commons would play into the hands of the SNP... Life under the Conservatives, in the short term at least, might be little different to life under Labour." - How different would life be with Cameron at No.10?

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Are the security services using mentally backward people for false flag operations?1.Nicky Reilly, who was involved in the nail bomb explosions in Exeter, England, in May 2008, was under surveillance by the Security Services. ( Face of the 'nail bomber': Police were tailing Muslim convert ...) . Was he being used by them?2. "GENTLE giant Nicky Reilly may have been 'brainwashed' into becoming a would-be suicide bomber... police say.

"One neighbour, Daniel Turner, 20, said... 'He is mentally ill and probably has the mental age of a 10 year old'...

"The chairman of the local Islamic Centre, Syed Rahman, said Mr Reilly may have prayed at the mosque but denied any knowledge of him. 'Certainly no one who attends our mosque has anything to do with extremism,' he said. 'This guy may have come to us, but we do not know him and we do not recognise him.'" (Exeter bombing suspect was 'brainwashed', friends insist)

3. It has been alleged that the American trained Indonesian military used mentally backward youths in their terror plots.

In 1998, elements of the Indonesian military wanted to topple Indonesia's President Wahid.

Allegedly, in East Java, members of the military dressed up as Ninjas.

Allegedly the military then dumped mental patients in villages.

When the village vigilantes arrived, they thought the mentally backward youths were Ninjas and chopped their heads off.

4. The mentally disturbed Marinus Van der Lubbe was accused by the Nazis of causing the Reichstag Fire. Many believe that he was manipulated by the Gestapo.

Historians Bahar and Kugel used evidence from Gestapo archives to argue that the fire was almost certainly started by the Nazis. They say that a commando group of at least three, and at most ten SA men led by Hans Georg Gewehr set the fire using self-lighting incendiaries, and that Van der Lubbe was brought to the scene later.[13]

5. 'Retarded Prisoner Was Informant For London Terror Raid', according to the London Mirror, June 18 2006

A MAN with an IQ of just 69 is believed to be the trigger behind the bungled terror raid in Forest Gate, East London.

Ex-waiter Mohammed Abu Bakr Mansha, 22, was a childhood pal of the innocent two brothers arrested in the dawn swoop by police two weeks ago.

In January he was jailed for six years for terror offences - and even described in court as an "utter incompetent". Soon afterwards, friends of brothers Abul Kahar, 23, and Abul Koyair, 20, visited him at top-security Belmarsh prison, in South-East London.

And, the Sunday Mirror has learned, that meeting sparked a surveillance operation on the men by the security services. According to a friend of the brothers, they laughed at constantly being followed. Our source said: "It was so obvious we treated it as a joke."

Then new information came through, said to include detailed drawings of a suicide vest.

That led to Operation Volga - the botched police operation to arrest the brothers, which led to Kahar being shot. After seven days in custody they were released without charge amid claims of incompetence and brutality.

Friends of the men believe dim Mansha was the trigger for the extraordinary operation.

Mansha's lawyer Sara O'Keefe revealed how her client was moved just before the raid from category 'A' Belmarsh to a softer category 'B' jail. She did not know why he got the favourable treatment, or whether he unwittingly helped MI5. Told that the brothers knew they were being followed she said: "That sounds about right."

Mansha - serving six years for possessing an old address of a British Army war hero, which police suspected was part of a terror plot - is appealing against his sentence. His trial revealed him to be educationally subnormal with an IQ of 69 - compared to the average of 100.In the US that would make his court evidence unreliable.

If Mansha is confirmed as the trigger for the raid, it will be hugely humiliating for the security services in their battle against terror.

Police and intelligence officials claim the information was from a reliable single source who knew the brothers and whom the security services had dealt with before.

But our probe suggests that if Mansha was at the centre of the investigation, the intelligence is highly suspect and deeply embarrassing for MI5. Vajahat Sharif, lawyer for one brother, slammed the "scattergun" approach, saying it would lead to police targeting more innocent people. He said: "Where does this stop? What about Mansha's friends, family or neighbours? They know him, so presumably they're terrorists."

A friend of the brothers said they'd grown up with Mansha. He said: "We used to play in the street. Abu was strange. He'd suddenly lose it. Once while playing street football, he got upset as no one passed to him. He took out a gun and went pop, pop, pop."

He added: "Once I saw him pee in the eye of a man lying on the floor, for fun. I've seen him do all sorts, bad things, because he's a nutter - but he's no al-Qaeda bomber. He needs help, not banging up. A few guys visited him in jail. I didn't go as I didn't like him, but suddenly Kahar and Koyair were being followed. It was so obvious we all treated it like a joke. Maybe if I'd gone too they'd have raided my house and shot me. It's a f***ing outrage."

On June 2 at 4am 250 officers, including forensic and chemicals experts, waited at the terraced home of their parents Abul Kalam and Alif Jan. Bursting through a window, 50 cops met Kahar and Koyair on the stairs. Kahar was shot in the shoulder. They were held for seven days as police dug the garden and drilled holes into walls seeking a chemical device.

A week later police issued a grudging apology, outraging locals. The brothers are suing for distress, wrongful imprisonment and damage to their house. But a pal said: "They don't blame Abu, he's an old friend. But he's capable of saying and doing anything. If he did say anything it would be madness if the police took him seriously."

Switzerland is divided up into cantons and towns (communes). In Switzerland, the central government (federal government) is not given too much power; the cantons and towns have a lot of power; referendums are held.

The central government controls foreign policy, defense, the railways and the mint.

If the central government brings in a new policy, a referendum can be held to vote it down.

There is a six-month period during which a referendum can be called by any person or group able to get 50,000 signatures on a petition. A central government policy can be thrown out by a simple majority vote in a referendum.

The cantons and communes control economic policy, welfare policy, the police, education and so on. Each canton has its own parliament and constitution.

Switzerland spends a lot on welfare and education but manages to keep taxes relatively low. This is because there are no huge ministeries full of useless civil servants, or bureaucrats.

Cantons and large communes have referendums and 'initiatives'. An 'initiative' is when an ordinary citizen proposes a new policy or law.